


like a sinking ship, as the band plays on

by seasalttears



Category: Holby City
Genre: F/F, I cannot help myself, I love a good AU, and stupid in love, and these two are so gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 17:21:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15689928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seasalttears/pseuds/seasalttears
Summary: Berenice Wolfe and Serena Campbell were rivals.





	like a sinking ship, as the band plays on

**Author's Note:**

> yes, another (kind of?) au because sometimes canon sucks and i love being trash!! 
> 
> title is from and Ingrid Michaelson song that also inspired this story, some lyrics weaved in.

Berenice Wolfe and Serena Campbell were rivals.

Always neck-in-neck for the top of their classes, never managing to get the best of each other, and yet, somehow, outrageously attracted to each other. Flirty banter and heated arguments make great foreplay.

They were arguing over the correct technique for a Y-incision when it happened. Serena insulted Bernie, Bernie kissed Serena. They broke away with heavy breathing and everything seemed to zero in on this moment, the electricity coursing all around and into them. Conduits of affection.

It didn’t take long for them to fall in love, but they never voiced it. How do you tell a person they are everything to you, when you inevitably have to leave them? Because they had to leave, they both had plans, and they both knew that. Neither one was willing to give up what they worked so hard for, and they respected each other for that. Their love had a countdown, the seconds ticking towards their own Armageddon.

“We both know it’s not going to work, Serena. You’ve said it yourself.”

“I know, but that doesn’t make it any easier.”

“It won’t be easy, but this is the right decision, for both of us.” A hand is grabbed, a sigh is released.

 “I love you,” and Bernie pauses, because they have an unspoken agreement about this.

“I love you too.” They leave tomorrow and it already hurts, knows this confession is a goodbye.

“What if we aren’t making the right decision, Bernie?” A whisper, a kiss on the cheek.

“Then the world will throw us together again.”

And throw them together, the world did.

 

The universe must have a great sense of humor, Serena thinks. Because why, after all these years of love and hurt and divorces and children, would the world decide to plant Bernie Wolfe right back into her lap? Because here Serena is, standing in front of the first person she ever loved, and she knows now more than ever that she never got over her.

 

Trauma is Bernie’s specialty- fixing it, causing it, you name it and she does it. A martyr gone wrong, she is too sacrificial, too worried about everyone else that she unintentionally rips away their right to choose and calls it penance. Catharsis comes in the form of avoided eye contact, and contrition is her staple personality trait. But Serena Campbell is looking at her after thirty-three years and for once in her life, she thinks she must have done something good, something right.

 

Bated breaths and comfortable silences are the only things that allow them to keep going, to keep working together. They run a ward together, a well-oiled machine of trauma and patients and staff. They can both feel the tension growing, slowly, and ignore it in favor of flirting. It feels so good, being able to tell a person you still love them through words that don’t mean anything. Words that aren’t supposed to mean anything.

But the tension still grows, both unable to stop it and not willing to do anything about it. So, they start to fight instead, over patient care and the best routes to use in theater. The whole of AAU quietly waits, eyes tracking stilted and stiff movements, glances thrown over shoulders. Patients ask the nurses to not have Bernie and Serena treat them at the same time “until they work out whatever lovers quarrel they’ve gotten themselves into.”

They are sitting in their office, another day of petty spats and eye rolls. Contempt is breeding to try and mask the undying devotion. Keyboards are tapped with force, spines straight, eye contact out of the question. And for once, it’s Bernie that breaks the silence, no longer able to stand it.

“Can you please tell me why you’re suddenly so angry with me?” Serena finally looks at her, and the well of emotions on her face is a book Bernie cannot read.

“Suddenly? There is nothing sudden about my anger, Berenice Wolfe. I have been angry at you since we were twenty-two.” Serena doesn’t mean to say it, but she’s been holding in her anger for what seems like years.

No, that’s right, years.

Bernie blanches, not expecting this topic of conversation to hit her in the face.

“That’s what this is about? We made that decision together, Serena. I thought that was all forgotten, water under the bridge?” Because she really did. She may be utterly and completely head-over-heels for Serena, but they never discussed the past, so she assumed they both used their non-verbal communication to decide not to. But Serena can no longer stand looking at the one person she has never stopped loving sitting across from her everyday and not do anything about.

“Do you really think I haven’t tried every single day of my life to forget you? Do you think I want to stay up at night and wonder why we couldn’t have tried just a little bit harder? Do you think I haven’t tried to drink you gone and out of my life for good?” Bernie’s temper flares with the words, her usual calm demeanor disappearing as years of aching for somebody she never thought she could have again is pulled from the depths of her soul and spilled on the desk between them.

“I know we should have tried harder, you don’t have to remind me, because I think about it all of the time. I’ve tried to smoke you out of my life for years, and yet I can’t get you out of my damn head. Because you, Serena Campbell, are the type of person that takes more than time to get over.”  

“What does that mean?” She thinks she knows, but life has taught her to question the things she wants to assume.

“It means that the past thirty years without you have been torture, and it’s still not getting any easier, because I still want you.”

Serena stops breathing and holds her tongue, because she is looking the love of her life in the eyes and doesn’t know how to say that. But Bernie can suddenly read, and she has always been a woman of action.

This kiss feels like going home after a long day to a hot cup of tea and an unmade bed, everything is right, and everything is perfect. Their centers of gravity are slowly shifting, slowly becoming each other, slowly coming home.

 

They’re in bed, pillowed together in a bubble of their own making. Serena is studying Bernie’s hands, remembers all of the things they are capable of, and tries to hold down the blush in favor of asking the question that’s suddenly plaguing her mind.

“Why did we run? When we could have had this all along?”

“Because fight or flight is in response to fear, and we chose to run, both afraid of the truth.”

“Which is?” A whisper, a kiss on the lips.

“That I love you.” A hand is grabbed, a sigh is released.

“And I love you.”

 

And this time, it’s not a goodbye.

 


End file.
